


a flashlight, and three stars

by Star_less



Category: Captain America (Movies), Spider-Man (Tom Holland Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Baby Peter Parker, Complete, Domestic Fluff, Domestic Steve Rogers/Tony Stark, Fluff, Gen, Iron Dad, Kid Peter Parker, Light Angst, M/M, Not Canon Compliant, One Shot, Peter Parker is Tony Stark's Biological Child, Post-Captain America: Civil War (Movie), Precious Peter Parker, Slice of Life, Steve is forgiven, iron dad and spidey son
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-04
Updated: 2020-07-04
Packaged: 2021-03-05 01:07:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,779
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25075858
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Star_less/pseuds/Star_less
Summary: “I’m so sorry,” Steve murmurs, even though they’d hurdled messily past apologies a long time ago. It feels so… glib, and yet there’s nothing else that would be appropriate.Long, long after the events of CA:CW Tony and Steve have reconciled; Tony remains physically scarred, and although forgiving, can't come to terms with how his scars look, and so he covers them up. Two stars, that's all.And then along comes a third.“One, two, three!” Peter beams proudly. “And, Daddy’s flashlight!”
Relationships: Peter Parker & Tony Stark, Steve Rogers/Tony Stark
Comments: 12
Kudos: 229





	a flashlight, and three stars

**Author's Note:**

> This feels angsty at first but it's not, not really, there is fluff. I promise. Whew.

The sensation of Steve’s hand on his should have sent electric tingles down his spine, the sort that flowered in his belly as they padded down the hall and made his back arch as he called Steve’s name, but it didn’t.   
Instead, it sort of made him feel sick - sick and numb and fuzzy. He’d lasted longer though, this time—no, wait, that should be, ‘kept his mouth shut longer’. They were in the inky blackness of the bedroom (Tony never let them have the lights on, not any more) and Steve’s hand was no longer in his but instead moving, clammy with anticipation, across Tony’s chest, closer, closer still, the thin fabric of his t-shirt lifting slightly from where it was resting against the arc reactor, Tony drew in a sharp whirling sort of breath. “Stop. Stop it.” He reeled back, curled in on himself. “Steve, I can’t let you see it. Stop, please.”

Steve breaks apart, gasping in surprise, grip falling from Tony’s chest. He reaches out to cup Tony’s cheek instead. “Okay,” he murmurs. It’s muffled by their lips connecting gently together. 

The first time Steve sees it, sees the culmination of Tony’s anxiety, he’s not sure what to say. The skin is healing but jarringly pink and jagged and scaly, meeting and breaking in the middle of Tony’s chest where the arc reactor is and snaking off, all tree-rooted, at the ends. It doesn’t look painful at all but what is, is the glimmering look to Tony’s eyes, the upward curve of his lip, the heavy breaths he’s taking to keep the tears at bay. He doesn’t look upset with Steve, he doesn’t look pained, he looks ashamed of himself as though it wasn’t Steve’s god-damned fault in the first place and that’s the hardest pill for Steve to choke back.

“I’m so sorry,” Steve murmurs, even though they’d hurdled messily past apologies a long time ago. It feels so… glib, and yet there’s nothing else that would be appropriate. 

Tony makes a noise, this soft, ‘yeah’ almost laughing even though it isn’t funny and with one finger Steve reaches out. “Is this okay?” he asks, constantly reassuring, and Tony nods to guide him. Slowly Steve traces the staggered pink lines with a new delicacy; the one he should’ve treated Tony with then – and has done, ever since. “It’s yours,” he says like they’re talking about a birthmark or a mole or the arc reactor, “it makes you beautiful.”   
…If anything it goes to show how much Tony has been ripped apart and how, piece by piece, he threads himself back together. And Steve thinks it beautiful. 

Tony doesn’t. To Tony, it’s a reminder of what they tried so hard to push past.

*

He sits in the chair and it creaks under him, in the way that leather does. The room is filled with the smell of wood and smoke and a sort of metallic twang. Somehow he feels like everybody has their eyes on him even though, rationally, that couldn’t be further from the truth.   
He swallows thickly, his Adam’s apple bobs while he rolls up his t-shirt; and he closes his eyes so he can’t see the reaction he receives. This only makes the clinking of the needles that bit louder, and he smiles to himself at the irony: he’s more scared of the reaction he’ll get to his scars than of getting a tattoo. He anticipates a wince that doesn’t come and, methodically, the tattooist inks over his scars.   
When it’s finished, the ink is black and gleamingly wet. 

Two pointed stars. 

A third star soon joins, not ink and points but babbling velvet, all drool and gurgles and blankets, and as Tony catches a glimpse of himself (bare-chested – he has to be for baby, that’s what the guidebooks say, skin to skin, or whatever) he thinks that maybe he could squeeze in a third star; and then, just as rapid, wondered whether – as a dad – he was too ‘uncool to have tattoos. In fourteen years, he imagines Peter – that’s his name, Peter Benjamin – inconceivably grown up and scoffing, ‘Oh Dad, you’re way too old for tattoos’ – except the thing is – the thing is that there’s still room, still crisped pink waiting to be covered up and then he imagines (even if, by this point, it’s the sleep deprivation prodding him on) Peter, still gorgeously small, tracing each star with a tiny fingertip (‘one for Daddy, one for Papa’, as Tony will tell him) and asking where the other star is, his star, and then suddenly it’s 4am and he’s stood nursing a snuffling milk-bellied Peter in one arm and confirming his next appointment with the other. 

A third star then appears, genuinely, tiny and inked and nestled between the points of the others, cradling his arc reactor and it is as though they have been there all his life somehow. He doesn’t feel altered any more, he feels complete. 

*

“Hey, you off now? Yeah-ah!”  
It’s five, and Peter is gabbling happily in Tony’s arms. Tony is juggling Peter, dinner, and his live phone call, and it’s times like these he wishes he has a third arm. “…sorry!” he wriggles the phone from where it is nestled in the crook of an arm and onto the kitchen counter. In one fluid motion, he taps ‘speakerphone’ and shifts Peter. “…Peter. Stubble obsession.”  
(Steve knows.)  
Peter is three, just, and Tony is at the stage where his stubble is re-growing, all cactus spikes. Peter is fascinated, in only the way three-year-olds can be, with the thorny sensation of Tony’s stubble on his palms (or, when he gets a goodnight kiss, his cheek) – and so any opportunity he gets he has his chubby claws patting and squeezing away… like right now. 

“Hon, hop down.” Tony has conceded defeat, Peter plopped ever-so-delicately feet first onto the kitchen floor, an urging hand to his back. “Papa will be home soon, why don’t you draw him a picture?” he enthuses. Colouring, the ever-present bribe. Peter looks like he might be hesitating. “…Papa might put it on the fridge!”   
Tony grins, and that’s enough for Peter to nod and turn – the pok-pok-pok of his tiny footsteps distancing as he reaches the safety of the living room – replaced by the spattered crackled voice of Steve once more.   
He’s off now, but Tony’s eyes are on Peter, penguin waddling.   
…Yes, he is. 

The orange murk of evening snuffs out to ashy night. “Fucking traffic.” Steve isn’t home. Tony scolds him even if he’s had worse hissed into his ears. “Eat without me, s’okay.”  
Dinner is done – some sort of cheesy pasta with hidden veggies for Peter. 

Peter is…

Come to think of it, Peter has been unusually quiet. Colouring is a good distraction, but it’s not that good of one. _Maybe_ , Tony thinks as he ends his call and bends, taking dinner from the oven, _maybe he’s fallen asleep_. It’s six and he usually manages an extra hour and fifteen minutes – but it would be typical, God damned typical, for Tony’s slaving over the oven to come to nothing. “Hon, you doing okay? Dinner’s ready. Yum yum!”

Dinner is Peter’s cue to scramble to the table – the pok-pok-pok of thudding feet returns and Tony smiles, because wow do they have him well trained. “Okay Daddy!” he smiles plaintively, “but first look! What I did!”

Another felt-tip-and-snot masterpiece to stick to the fridge, no doubt. ‘That’s the bestest picture Daddy has ever seen!’ Tony rehearses, imagining a dramatic fall to the floor or something just to make Peter giggle. He pokes his head around the door, mouth shaped in preparation, ‘Th—’ on his tongue – and stops. 

‘ohmigodwhathaveyoudone?’ flies through his head. He barely bites it back. 

Peter’s skin – his perfectly milky, still babyishly unblemished, china-doll skin is webbed in thick harsh black marker scribbles. They stretch messily in wide loops around his mouth; his chin is thick dark black lines like a little piece of coal. His upper lip less so, but some has strayed onto his nose and back down toward his mouth as though he’s had a pretty spectacular and haphazard Movember – 

It clicks. 

“That’s… fantastic, sweetie,” Tony’s voice is faint. Oh God, it’ll take hours to scrub off. The bath water’ll be like a swamp. He imagines Steve opening the door to a black tidal wave, swept away; a naked squealing child follows, laughing maniacally, and then Tony: only the whites of Tony’s eyes showing under the black suds pleading, ‘help!’.

“Now I look like you!” Peter grins impishly—it’s even on his _teeth_ , for god’s sake, how did he get it on his teeth?!—but he’s not done because of course not, how silly of Tony to think he was done. He lifts his tee-shirt and there is… well, there is a nice thatch of black scribbles settled around a bright blue circle, which in itself circles his belly button. 

“…Amazing!” Tony says, not that he has any clue what he’s looking at. 

“One star, two star, three stars!” Peter beams proudly. “And, Daddy’s flashlight!”

“Ohh…!” Tony smiles in realisation and finds that his insides have gone a bit warm and fuzzy. ‘Daddy’s flashlight’ sounded like some awful euphemism—they really had to teach him the proper word before he went parroting it at school. The first time Peter saw it (or perhaps the first time he saw a real flashlight, Tony couldn’t remember) he was quite – adorably - concerned Tony had indeed swallowed a flashlight and 'was it stuck there forever?' Then, well, it had just stuck. “That is my arc reactor, buddy, well done!” He gleams, the warm fuzzy feeling now cupped in pride, reaching down to ruffle Peter’s hair. “And my stars.” Sure, the stars were scribbles and the arc reactor was a little too low down, but he’s sure that his son is already some sort of genius. “You’re gonna be a pretty cool tattooist when you grow up.” He chuckles.

“…tattooist…” A new word. Peter says it slowly, rolling the word around his tongue with interest.   
Tony nods. Genius. “We gotta wash those tatts off before bed, though, hon.” A sympathetic wince. 

Peter whines, lowering his t-shirt as if that’d prevent it somehow. “No!”

“Mhm.” Tony nods firmly. “After dinner?” he bargains.

Peter hangs his head. “I want Papa to see my flashlight and my stars, like Daddy’s,” he mumbles, although – for a toddler – is surprisingly firm. 

…Ah. This feels like a good idea. Steve would have to deal with the bath-and-bed routine. Tony will say it a third time, genius. He smiles. “Of course, honey, but you have to eat all your dinner.”

**Author's Note:**

> I don't write Marvel all that much any more, huh, and this is why! I'm sorry at how bad this is!
> 
> Also I am aware that like, Tony shouldn't have forgiven Steve for what happened in CACW necessarily, esp. if he ended up physically scarred, and Steve trying to say sorry is but like, I dunno, I couldn't get this out of my head and didn't want to bog it down with pining/forgiveness. blech. So imagine they had a lot of couples therapy prior. Please. xD
> 
> if you liked this, I appreciate kudos/comments/general love. thanks!


End file.
